Peyton Manning turned Indianapolis into a football town. If you are a 20-year-old Colts fan, all you really know is Peyton Manning, and winning. If you are a 40-year-old Colts fan, chances are you rooted for a different team at one point in your life.

Regardless, Manning won the city, and now both of those fans bleed blue.

Meece points out that this unparalleled run of success gave rise to literally every single writer here at Colts Authority. Without Manning we’d likely not be writing about football and certainly we wouldn’t be doing it together. That’s just a tiny side effect. He believes the Manning years had a social and economic impacts that are wide-ranging and changed the face of the city.

And He’s right. In this moment Colts fans must prove that they’re more like the crowd in Green Bay and less like the crowd in Jacksonville. It is incredibly tempting for fans to find another winner at this juncture or to even abandon the sport entirely and return to their hardwood roots. Their choice remains to be seen.

About Todd Smith

Todd Smith is a part-time sportswriter who spends too much time arguing on Twitter. What he really loves is eating poorly and watching football. He got his first Colts t-shirt in 1984 shortly after the Mayflower trucks arrived and has never given up on his hometown team.
He also still holds to the belief that Kordell Stewart stepped out of the end zone and thus cheated the Colts.